Using canned responses in Gmail can be a great help for you especially if you are busy and have to send the same emails again and again. When using Canned Responses, you don’t actually create new messages, but reply with your previously saved draft message. What this means is that, when you compose a message after enabling canned responses in Gmail, you can access your saved draft to reuse its content.
Canned responses are very useful in that, if you are too busy to respond an email or are simply tired of typing the same response over and over again, simply create a canned response for it. The beauty is that Gmail allows you to use these texts directly from within the compose window.
Creating your own Canned Responses
Canned responses are great, but they’re even better when you can create your own — which is exactly what this tip does.
Open up Gmail’s settings by clicking the gear icon at the top of any Gmail page, then choose Settings from the menu that pops up. The Settings page should appear; click the Labels tab from the list on the left, then scroll down to the bottom of this pane and click “Add more labels.” In the box that appears next, type a name for your new label — whatever you want.
Gmail will automatically add a colon followed by what you typed at the end of it for you — this is called a label link, and serves as a name for the new Canned Response you’re about to create. In other words, Gmail will now recognize your new label as “mycannedresponse.”
Click Done from the bottom of this box after typing in the name. Back on your Settings page , you should see the new label you just created at the bottom of your list. Click on it, and Gmail will take you to a page where you can start adding your Canned Responses. Type in your first response, click Add below this box to add it to the list, then repeat as necessary — clicking Done when you’re finished with each response.
How to Edit a Canned Response in Gmail
You can edit and delete your Canned Responses on the same page where you created them: just click on a response to open it up, edit as necessary, then hit Delete below the box when you’re done. When you’ve finished adding all your canned responses and editing as needed, scroll down to the bottom of this list (if it doesn’t appear at the bottom of your Gmail window, click “More” to show the Canned Response section).
Once you’ve got all your responses entered and edited (if necessary) in that list, click Save Changes near the bottom of this page. That’s it! Now when you compose a new email message in Gmail, use the “Canned responses” drop-down menu to select the response you want.
Automatically Generated Canned Responses
Earlier, we saw how users can create their own labeled canned responses. However, there are certain canned responses that Gmail automatically adds for you; these include “I’m on vacation,” “Out of the office” and other boilerplate messages (the automatic ones). These canned responses can be found by clicking the “Canned responses” drop-down menu from Gmail’s Compose window .
In this menu, you’ll find a list of canned responses that are automatically provided for you. You can use any of these to quickly reply or forward an email without having to type out the same line again and again (though they won’t appear in the Compose window per se, but will be inserted when you choose a canned response from this drop-down list).
In addition to the automatic canned responses, Gmail also allows users to add their own custom ones which can represent frequently used messages or text that may vary depending on circumstances.
Conclusion:
You can create your own canned responses that will automatically appear in Gmail’s Compose window under the Canned Response section. This way, you will spend less time typing out common messages whenever you reply to an email message. You can also edit and delete the canned responses that have been previously created, so you will always stay in control of your Gmail account.